This is NOT an optical illusion

I’ve read a lot of the MND/ALS literature; there was nothing about this.

I was diagnosed just before Christmas 2017 and was told to put on weight by eating a lot of butter and cream.

Which I did.

And this much I do know to be true: that the willy of a fat man always looks smaller.

It’s one of the optical illusions that is never held up as an example of optical illusions. It’s never one of those examples printed in those 99p optical illusion books on sale in wire buckets in shopping arcades.

But no, really, it’s definitely getting smaller. Trust me.

On my right foot my toes are curling round into claws. I look down and I think I’m perfectly adapted to shimmying up trees with my claw foot digging into the soft bark.

Of course I am!

Elsewhere in my body the fascinating fasciculations have died down.

I used to look down and watch them: the tiny subcutaneous Oompa Loompa band running up and down my forearm.

Which was actually my muscle fibres twitching; looking for a neuron to connect with.

Each thinking, ‘What the fuck!’

‘Where are you?’

Like they’ve been ‘stood up’ on a date.

By a neurone.

Back in the day, my fasciculations were like the percussion section at The Last Night of the Proms. Or the visitation of one vast bodily boogie woogie.

But now my sporadic twitches remind me of the ineffectual sets of indoor fireworks that were popular when I was a child. All fizz and no pop.

Or a jilted date sloping off home to bed.

So that now I’m growing a claw foot and my willy is shrinking.

BTW, ever since I wrote my article for The Sun I’ve been captivated by this non-paragraph prose style.